Tag: PUBLISHING

Time to tackle the burning question for indie authors: Should I go exclusive with Amazon?

For any self-published indie author, Amazon is a big factor in many decisions. I’ve written before about the 800 lb gorilla that is the Amazon review. The reason Amazon is so important to reviews is the same reason it’s so important to an author’s sales strategy: it’s the single biggest distributor of books, especially e-books. And with their Kindle Select offering, Amazon offers marketing and sales incentives in exchange for not distributing your e-book with anyone else.

So, the question boils down to, do I want to get a bigger slice of a smaller pie? What’s an indie author to do?

Ah book marketing. Still the bane of my writing existence. It’s time to see what I learned after publishing my first novel. What would I do again, what would I do differently, and what am I still uncertain of?

Self-publishing is a long game. It’s only been a couple of months since I released my first novel. But it’s also an ever-evolving process, one I’m learning as I go along. I call it The Process. I borrowed the name from the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. They went through several painful years of losing in order to build up a contender. Although their season ended unceremoniously with a drubbing at the hands of the Boston Celtics, their future is bright. The Process worked.

I’m not there yet. Marketing my first novel has been painful at times, and full of errors. Yet I’m learning some lessons already. And I’m going to borrow again from the 76ers to write about it. [Yes it’s another one of my weird NBA/self-publishing mash-up posts – gotta blog about what you love, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ]

Here are a few things that I’d do again in a heartbeat for my next novel, some I’ll never do again, and a few in between.

And you know what that means…

Uh, well, I won’t quite be back to regular programming just yet. I still need to work on e-book channels outside of Amazon. But for the most part, work on Sparrow Squadron is switching over to longer time-frame advertising campaigns, so no more frenzied spam bursts. That means an uptick in properly bookish and historical blog posts.

What to look for soon:

The life and times of Sophie Blanchard, the solo woman aviator and one of the first military aviators.

Things I would do differently: lessons learned in the mad dash to publish my first book.